


A Boy and his Ace

by fantasyseal



Series: A Boy and his Ace [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 02:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7995520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantasyseal/pseuds/fantasyseal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nishinoya worries a lot about his ace.<br/>Asahi is bad at saying no to his libero.<br/>My first effort at a Haikyuu!! fic, please forgive me if the characterization is terrible.<br/>...Also I SWEAR this ends on a fluff note and not an angst one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

             It was fine that Asahi didn’t want to go to college.

              Really.

              Even if he _had_ gotten most of the scout offers from that last match (the number of scouts who wanted Seijoh players was pretty impressive, and apparently defeating Seijoh meant Karasuno was officially on the scouting radar again).

              It was just that, well, everyone had _someone_ in this team, right? Forming little mini-bonds was totally normal in volleyball. Daichi and Suga were pretty much married, Kageyama and Shouyou were inseparable, he should _really_ point out to Tsukishima that ‘here’s a towel’ does not translate to ‘I love you’ in any form of Japanese and he needs to actually tell Yamaguchi he likes him because Yamaguchi is denser than a brick and he’s never going to figure it out on his own…

              And it wasn’t like Nishinoya _only_ played volleyball because of Asahi. Block-follow training was a good thing for any decent libero to learn anyway, and becoming a backup setter when Kageyama had to receive the ball was really useful, and yes, okay, he’d only come back because Asahi had, but he liked playing with Asahi. Saving the ball when their ace couldn’t spike past a block was a good feeling. Sending their ace a toss was a good feeling (Tanaka had pointed out to him that he only ever tossed to Asahi, and Nishinoya had vehemently denied that it was intentional; it’s just that he can’t do the freak quick toss, so Hinata was out, and Asahi was their ace, and he wasn’t good at pinpointing the toss location yet, so they always wound up too high and too far from the net and _shut up, Tanaka, I’ll get Suga and Kageyama to help me so I can fix it, where do you think Kiyoko-san went?_ ).

              But even though Nishinoya didn’t necessarily _need_ Asahi to play volleyball, he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he didn’t want to play on a different court than Asahi (or worse, on a different team; he didn’t think he could be the guardian deity of another team if it meant seeing that horrible heartbroken-puppy look Asahi got when his spike was blocked and not being there to save it) for longer than absolutely necessary, and if Asahi didn’t go to college, Nishinoya might never get to toss to him and save his blocked spikes again, so he _had_ to get Asahi interested in college somehow.

              Besides, Asahi was way too smart not to go to college. Unlike Nishinoya, Asahi’s notes were always neat and organized and never trailed off into sleepy nonsense. Nishinoya tried to pay attention, he swore up and down he tried, but the lectures always faded into a kind of blurry wall that was impossible to get anything out of, and he dozed off, and when he woke up his notes would be completely illegible scribbles that trailed off into nothing. Daichi was no help; he insisted he just had to stop falling asleep in class and scolded him every time he saw one of Nishinoya’s tests (he’d gotten better about hiding them, but unfortunately Takeda-sensei got to see all of them on the grounds that if they slipped too far he needed to know so he could prevent Nishinoya from skipping study time to come to volleyball practice).

              So after giving the matter all due consideration (for a total of ten minutes), Nishinoya finally thought up a plan. Takeda-sensei was happy to give him a list of the universities that had offered Asahi scholarships and a place on their team, and he even had it ordered by how much of a discount on tuition they were willing to give Asahi. Nishinoya was thrilled to see that a few of them had actually offered a full scholarship. Surely even Asahi couldn’t pass up college if there was no downside, right?

\---

              “What?”

              “Come look at colleges with me after school!” _oh no, he’s doing the Thing again._ Asahi was seriously never going to forgive Hinata for teaching Nishinoya that the combination of fluffy hair and huge sad eyes looking up at you was basically impossible to say ‘no’ to. It was even worse than his previous method of annoying everyone into doing what he wanted. Even _Daichi_ had been known to cave to the Nishinoya Puppy Eyes, and, well, if Daichi couldn’t resist, how on Earth was he supposed to?

              To his credit, he did manage a “Why…” before Nishinoya interrupted with his usual cheerful torrent of words.

              “I know it’s still my second year but it’s important to think about these things and I wanna have someone with me and Daichi said I should take a third year but he’s busy picking out his recommendation for Captain after the spring tournament and Suga has to help him and that just left you—“ He broke off and returned to his puppy-dog face, and Asahi groaned inwardly. So help him, he was going to get Kageyama to go into his scary mode and scare Hinata into telling Nishinoya that that face didn’t actually work and…okay, no, he wasn’t. And it was good that Nishinoya was thinking about college already, right? Maybe he’d be better at staying awake in class if he had an actual goal.

              …Plus, well, Nishinoya still looked like a middle-schooler if you didn’t know him that well, and he’d hate to see Nishinoya get into a fight, if only because he’d probably send his opponent to the hospital. If he was there, no one would bother Nishinoya about his height.

              “Okay!” he blurted, noticing the sad-puppy look instantly disappear from Nishinoya’s face, only to be replaced by that smile he had that Asahi swore could light up the entire world all by itself. Truth be told, that grin melted Asahi almost as much as the sad eyes did, but under no circumstances was he going to tell Nishinoya that.

              “But on a _weekend,_ okay? We don’t have time after school, it’s always dark by the time we finish practice.”

              Nishinoya nodded so fast his hair kept wobbling, that huge grin still plastered on his face. “Okay-sure-thanks-Asahi-see-you-this-weekend-bye!” He ran off practically skipping. (Asahi had wondered before if their libero could have been just as good a spiker as Hinata. He certainly jumped as high when he wanted to; he’d been known to leap right on Asahi’s back when he got particularly excited.)

              Asahi watched him fly off into the sunset, his ridiculous spiked hair somehow even more excited than usual, and allowed himself a brief moment of thinking what it would be like for that smile to be just for him, not because he was the only available third-year this weekend, or because Nishinoya had saved one of his practice serves _again,_ or because Kiyoko-san had walked into the general vicinity.

              Only a moment, though, because if anyone on this entire volleyball team was completely, 100% straighter-than-a-ruler heterosexual, it was their libero. Asahi had accepted that a long time ago. Actually, Asahi had accepted it the moment a tiny new first-year had bounded up to him with a complete lack of the fear that shorter people in particular tended to have if they didn’t know Asahi and asked him what their cute manager’s name was and what he thought his chances of getting her phone number were.

              …Unfortunately, that was also the moment Asahi realized the tiny new first-year was really, really cute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nishinoya's note-taking troubles are based on mine-- in my head that kid has a bad case of inattentive ADHD. The way the narration describes it is the best way I've come up with to explain what it feels like. Imagine having a really bad head cold and getting no sleep and then going to school? Except all the time, and generally on a full night's sleep.  
> First attempt at a shipfic; this is all written already, and I'll be posting a chapter a day. I made an AO3 just to post it, actually. College is hard and this was a nice stress reliever. Feel free to tell me what you think!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the 33 people (not counting me) who've read this so far, thank you! I hope you liked it!  
> To the three who left kudos, I'm so glad you liked it enough to do so and I hope you want to keep reading!  
> To the one person who left a comment, I love and appreciate you and THANK YOU SO MUCH AGAIN

              Nishinoya met him at the school Saturday morning, practically bouncing off his heels with unspent happy energy, and it took everything Asahi had not to blurt out how _cute_ he was. He was way too alert considering the hour, and his gaze was fixed on Asahi and Asahi was gradually realizing that this was, in fact, an extremely bad idea.

              He scrambled around to the passenger side of his car and opened the door for Nishinoya, muttering an apology about the mess (which was nonexistent; he’d cleaned it up specifically for today) and keeping his eyes firmly averted from the fact that instead of just climbing into the seat like anyone else would, Nishinoya actually bounced off his heels and into the car before clicking his seat belt (okay, so maybe he didn’t avert them all that successfully). Asahi shut the door and went around to the driver’s side, hoping Nishinoya hadn’t noticed him watching.

              “So, where to?” He was expecting a name, but Nishinoya happily shoved a list of colleges ordered by distance from both the school and each other at him, each one so carefully annotated with the strength of the school’s volleyball team that Asahi suspected Takeda-sensei had helped him, because _absolutely no way_ would Nishinoya ever have the patience to research the strength of every volleyball team individually.

              He was about to protest—there were _five_ names on the list! How were they going to hit five campuses in one day?—but he could see Nishinoya gearing up into puppy-eyes mode, so he just sighed, asked Nishinoya where the first one was, and spent the rest of the drive listening to Nishinoya’s excited chatter about basically everything in existence, and in particular everything volleyball-related.

              …It wasn’t a bad drive, all things considered.

\---

              Nishinoya breathed a sigh of relief to himself as he started calling out directions to Asahi; apparently their stupid ace really hadn’t looked at the list of colleges that had scouted him. He’d been _so worried_ that Asahi would notice the list of ‘potential colleges’ looked exactly like the list of colleges that wanted Asahi to play volleyball for them that were also within a normal driving distance.

              Now if he could just keep Asahi from realizing what he was doing...

              He risked a quick sideways glance at Asahi, and noticed he’d actually _combed_ his hair, instead of just shoving it behind a headband or yanking it into his silly fluffy bunny-tail bun. And he’d _shaved,_ and…

              Well, actually, he was kind of hot. Actually he was way hotter than Kiyoko-san. Not that Asahi being hot was exactly news (Nishinoya was mostly-straight, not _completely blind_ ), but for whatever reason he was noticing it more than usual. Must be because he could actually see above his legs today (being a libero had the upside of being able to discreetly admire everyone’s butts and the downside of _only_ being able to discreetly admire everyone’s butts due to always being either in the back row or diving to save a ball). _Holy damn, though, his hair really is adorable like that._

              “Nishinoya!” and the libero startled, realizing he’d completely lost track of the navigation and trying to wrestle his Asahi-is-hot thoughts back down to their normal levels because Asahi needed him to _make him go to college,_ he didn’t need Nishinoya checking him out, that’d just make everything _really weird._

“Sorry, I zoned out…” Nishinoya muttered, putting on his best neutral face. “Are we at that intersection already? Go right, then it’s just down the road a bit.” Asahi nodded and put on his blinker, leaving Nishinoya nothing to do but mentally kick himself around.

              Okay, so he’s hot, but he’s never been interested in dating. Nishinoya had never seen him checking out Kiyoko-san, and he’d never once looked at Tanaka with his shirt off, either, and really, those two together were basically the definition of hot. If he wasn’t looking at Kiyoko-san and Tanaka, he probably-definitely wasn’t interested AT ALL, much less in Nishinoya. Nishinoya knew perfectly well that everyone on the team (and at school) thought of him like they would a puppy. Small, cute, bouncy, cheerful, and not particularly bright. (Mostly the teachers, on that last one.)

              Nishinoya made a show of looking excitedly out the window as they pulled into the first college, like a good student thinking ahead to the future and his education should, and he gave Asahi his best Rolling Thunder grin as they got out of the car, but his brain immediately went on high alert. Even shoving aside the Asahi-is-hotter-than-usual problem, he still had to deal with the if-too-many-scouts-see-Asahi-his-plan-is-completely-screwed problem, and it was kind of hard to hide someone who was not only unfairly tall but also broader than the volleyball net.

              Still, at first it went pretty well. Nishinoya surprised himself with how easy it was to appear happy and normal and made sure to flash his smile at Asahi every time someone asked him what middle school he was from and Asahi stepped between them and introduced him as Karasuno High’s star libero (it happened annoyingly often). He kept up a constant chatter of statistics, reciting the percentage of students that got financial aid, the volleyball team’s strength, who had won anything significant in volleyball last year, which ones had the best academics, which ones Karasuno students had gone on to play for…and if Asahi was surprised that he’d memorized it all when he ordinarily couldn’t keep anything in his head for more than five minutes, he didn’t mention it. Most of the schools were even willing to let them see their gym so long as they had an escort, and they got to watch one of the volleyball teams practice. Nishinoya had never seen so many Tsukishima-sized people in one place, and waved happily to the much-shorter liberos in friendly acknowledgment.

              He could see Asahi was getting tired, and they’d almost hit all the schools within driving distance for a day trip, so he bounced back into the car with an enthusiastic “Just one more, Asahi!” and an extra-sad puppy-dog face just in case. Asahi just smiled and climbed back into the car, and off they went, Nishinoya demanding to know which one Asahi liked best and Asahi responding that he wasn’t going to make Nishinoya’s choice for him.

              Unfortunately for Nishinoya, that last school ruined his entire plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I got to go to club volleyball tryouts at my school on Wednesday and last night, and I learned a couple of things:  
> Liberos are, in fact, completely nuts. Two of them dove into each other trying to receive a ball. (They're both fine.)  
> Volleyball players do in fact yell NICE SERVE and NICE BLOCK at every opportunity. I haven't heard 'nice kill' yet, and they don't say 'nice receive', they say 'nice up'.  
> Chapter 3 will be up tomorrow!


	3. Chapter 3

              It was going fine. They parked in the guest lot, got out, and started exploring the campus like they’d done for all the others. Nishinoya had high hopes for this one; it was well-known for volleyball, and he knew for a fact it had offered Asahi a full scholarship, and the academic side of it wasn’t exactly a slouch either. He’d made _extra_ sure to memorize all this school’s statistics, and he was happily rattling them off, watching carefully to make sure Asahi was interested, when he accidentally hit someone walking behind him. (He’d gotten too excited and started talking with his hands. Everyone at Karasuno knew to give him a pretty wide berth when that happened, but he’d forgotten that he wasn’t at Karasuno.)

              Not even hearing Asahi’s yelp of “Nishinoya!”, he spun around and bowed as deeply as he could, sputtering apologies and asking if they were okay, when he realized the person he’d hit was talking over him.

              “Azumane-san! I thought I’d asked your coach and faculty advisor to have you call ahead…we could have given you a proper tour, there’s no need to come by yourself! Welcome to our campus!...”

              Nishinoya froze in his bow, hardly hearing anything past “Azumane-san”. _No no no we were really close to being done why now maybe I can just laugh this off._ He took a minute to compose his face back to a fairly neutral expression (he couldn’t manage his Rolling Thunder grin) and straightened up and walked over to Asahi. Maybe he hadn’t figured it out. Asahi was pretty dense, sometimes. That damned scout was walking away from him, with his ace, over Asahi’s protests, so he ran a bit to catch up.

              “…and our gym’s volleyball equipment’s all new this year, as a bit of thanks for our performance last year! We’re really hoping you’ll choose this school…I know you’ve gotten a lot of scouting offers from other volleyball schools, but please consider us! ...Ah, this is Karasuno’s libero, yes?”

              Nishinoya, still panting slightly from his run to catch up to Asahi and his _stupid long stride,_ bowed politely. “Nishinoya Yuu, sir. Second-year.” He stole a quick glance at Asahi; he looked confused, but not really upset. Maybe it would be okay. It wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility that one school he was looking at had scouted Asahi, right? Especially since they were known for volleyball.

              The scout smiled courteously back. “Of course, of course. Play like that your third year and you might just have a spot here too, young man.” His attention was still mostly on Asahi, to Nishinoya’s great annoyance, and then he resumed his pattering explanation of their volleyball team.

              Asahi was, to all appearances, perfectly polite and a courteous listener, but Nishinoya could see the put-upon expression he got on his face when he was only doing something because he was too much of a pushover to get away from it. When they were _finally_ done with the tour, Asahi thanked the scout and practically flew to his car, muttering something about getting Nishinoya home before dark. Nishinoya was only too happy to oblige, thanking his lucky stars that the scout hadn’t mentioned any of the other schools that wanted Asahi on their team.

              Once they were headed back home, Nishinoya did his best to fill the silence with a string of cheerful chatter about the schools they visited, and _sorry, Asahi, I had no idea you’d been scouted there, but that really is a good school, isn’t it? I’m definitely applying there next year!_

Asahi never said anything, though, and eventually Nishinoya fell silent and only piped up to issue directions. He didn’t live far from Karasuno, and Asahi pulled up in front of his house and waited long enough to see that he went inside before pulling out.

              Nishinoya raced straight upstairs and opened his laptop, finding the Everyone Except Asahi chat on Skype he’d set up to notify everyone else of his plan, which he now realized was completely stupid, but he’d promised to tell them how it went.

**_GuardianDeity is online._ **

**GuardianDeity:** mission accomplished.

 **GuardianDeity:** i think.

 **LittlerGiant:** you think??

 **HinataStopChangingMyName:** what do you mean you think

 **GuardianDeity:** the volleyball scout caught us at the last school

 **GuardianDeity:** i dont think he figured it out but he got dragged around the whole campus

 **TsukishimaKei:** Isn’t that just what you were doing, but with someone else?

 **Yamaguchi:** Tsukki!

 **GuardianDeity:** yeah but the scout took forever and talked about everything i dont think he liked it

 **GuardianDeity:** he wasnt talking on the way home either

 **Daichi:** I still say we should have just talked to him.

 **GuardianDeity:** weve tried that u know it doesnt work

 **GuardianDeity:** hes too stubborn

 **SugaSetter:** What if he figures it out? We can’t afford to have you two out of sync

 **GuardianDeity:** what else was i supposed to do

 **TsukishimaKei:** Tell him you're worried instead of dragging him around Japan all day?

 **Yamaguchi:** TSUKKI!

 **TsukishimaKei:** Am I wrong?

 **GuardianDeity:** ksjadfl

**_GuardianDeity has gone offline._ **

**LittlerGiant:** is he ok

 **Daichi:** Takeda-sensei says Asahi texted him looking for the list of schools that scouted him.

 **LittlerGiant:** oh damn

 **HinataStopChangingMyName:** hinata dont swear

**_LittlerGiant oh damn_ **

**Daichi:** Both of you cut it out or I’m banning you from the gym for a week.

 **SugaSetter whispers to Daichi:** That’s an empty threat and you know it

 **Daichi whispers to SugaSetter:** Okay, but they don’t.

 **Kiyoko:** All of you should be in bed.

\---

              Asahi stood in his room, comparing the emailed list of schools to the ones on Nishinoya’s list. Every one of them was on there.

              _Of course_ he wasn’t really interested in college. Nishinoya had never cared that much about anything but volleyball; why would he want to go tour colleges a year early? Why would he have an _entire list_ of potential colleges already? And most importantly, why did Asahi not _check the list in the first place to make sure Nishinoya wasn’t up to anything?_

…He probably wouldn’t have even checked if Nishinoya wasn’t so transparent. He’d just frozen, like someone knowing Asahi’s last name on a college campus was the absolute worst possible outcome.

He looked at the list again, like checking it again was going to change what was on it. Stupid crush making him trust basically everything Nishinoya said because Nishinoya was an actual ray of sunshine and actual rays of sunshine aren’t supposed to lie.

              …He can’t even make himself be mad. Nishinoya just voluntarily spent the entire day trying to get him to go to college, he got to spend an _entire day_ with that adorable sunny smile directed at him, even if it was mostly to distract him, and it only got ruined at that last school when that scout dragged him everywhere. Even then, it wasn’t really the scout’s fault Asahi wanted Nishinoya to keep talking in that too-fast voice, like he was afraid he’d forget everything if he didn’t tell Asahi about it _right now._

              And then he’d been so busy thinking on the drive home that he hadn’t talked to Nishinoya at ALL, and suddenly this seemed like the most important thing in the world; what if Nishinoya thought he’d done something wrong? _What if Nishinoya thought Asahi was mad at him oh no oh no he probably does_

              He’d set Nishinoya straight at practice tomorrow, and gently explain to him again that he wasn’t going to college, and it would be fine. They’d go right back to their libero-and-ace dynamic, the team would be fine, and everything would be normal again.

              And the tiny part of him that had been hoping Nishinoya _finally_ liked him back when he found out Daichi and Suga had no plans whatsoever this weekend was just going to have to deal with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAAAAH I can't believe how many people have looked at this. THANK YOU! (Particular thank-yous to the people who left kudos, and a Super Mega Thank You to Arghnon for being so encouraging.) (Edit: How on Earth did I miss that one person bookmarked it? THANK YOU TOO)  
> For some reason it's way harder to get the boys' characters right over text instead of through dialogue...I hope they're at least sort of believable. Last chapter tomorrow! (Probably afternoon, sorry! Chemistry gets between me and my computer.)


	4. Chapter 4

              Unfortunately for Asahi’s plan, Nishinoya wasn’t at school, and when Asahi asked, Daichi just muttered something about how he had a cold and didn’t want to get everyone else sick. Asahi pointed out that he’d been fine yesterday and Daichi just shrugged and told him he’d probably be fine tomorrow, and go warm up, being the ace didn’t get him out of diving drills.

              Asahi was a complete disaster in practice, at one point jump-serving the ball right into Hinata’s head (Kageyama found this hilarious for some reason). After that, Suga pulled him off the court and ordered him home with Daichi’s approval, and after making sure he hadn’t actually injured Hinata, he slunk off the court. (Fortunately Hinata’s head of orange fluff was pretty good protection from aces who couldn’t remember that the ball went _over the net_.)

              Suga had given him strict orders to _go home and rest and not worry about Nishinoya, he’ll be fine,_ so of course Asahi completely ignored him and went straight over to Nishinoya’s. (It was on the way home. Technically. Assuming twenty minutes in the wrong direction was on the way home.) He knew perfectly well Nishinoya didn’t have a cold, and he wasn’t going to be able to relax until he made sure Nishinoya knew he wasn’t upset. Asahi was the one with anxiety on the team (well, he kept meaning to talk to Hinata about looking into a diagnosis), but he knew Nishinoya took personal problems way harder than he should.

              He knocked on the door to Nishinoya’s house, greeted Nishinoya-san and Nishinoya’s little sister, introduced himself as a member of Karasuno’s volleyball team, and asked if he could please speak with Nishinoya. Yes, he understood Nishinoya wasn’t feeling well—he was just here to pass on the well-wishes of the team; they’d missed their libero at practice.

              He ducked upstairs with a promise to not overexert Nishinoya and a ‘thank-you’, wondering if he should have asked which door was Nishinoya’s for all of two seconds before seeing the one painted orange with team pictures plastered all over it. Asahi knocked on what was pretty much the only small bit of actual wood that wasn’t covered over with photos, and heard a quiet ‘come in’ that he honestly didn’t realize was Nishinoya at first. He was so used to their libero taking up more room in any given space than his tiny frame had any right to.

              Asahi carefully opened the door, determined not to startle Nishinoya, and ducked into the room. Nishinoya’s room was the definition of ‘cheerful chaos’; it looked like a schoolwork bomb had gone off on his desk, and his laundry hamper was standing there, completely empty, with what looked like an entire store’s worth of clothes piled on top of and around it.

              And then Asahi spotted Nishinoya and instantly stopped noticing anything else. He’d curled into the blankets, his hair was sticking up all over the place from sleeping on it with the amount of hair gel he put on it, his face was buried in a pillow, and Asahi was horrified to realize that he was actually snuffling in that terrible out-of-tears way. _He’s been like this all day. He probably got Daichi to cover for him. I should’ve known, shouldn’t have gone to practice should’ve come straight here stupid stupid stupid stupid_ …

              “Nishinoya?” he asked, as quietly as he could manage. The last thing he wanted was to upset his libero further, but still, as soon as Nishinoya realized who he was, Asahi could see him flinch through the blanket. He moved his head enough for one brown eye to peer out from the pillow, apparently just to confirm that it was in fact Asahi, and then curled right back into his blanket.

              Asahi sighed, found a clear spot of floor next to the bed, and sat down. This whole ‘cheering up Nishinoya’ thing was definitely not his strong point—usually Nishinoya was the one trying to cheer everyone else up—but he had to fix this, somehow. Maybe a joke? “You, uh, missed me serving into Hinata’s head today.”

              The blanket pile huffed out a noise that could _potentially_ be a laugh, and, encouraged, Asahi went on, “Hinata’s swearing up and down now he’s going to hit one at me on purpose next practice.”

              The blanket twitched again in what Asahi was almost sure was a laugh. True, it wasn’t a Nishinoya-laugh, the infectious kind that went on forever and made everyone else laugh even if they didn’t know the joke, but it was definitely a laugh.

              The pile of blankets very slowly moved as Nishinoya sat up and rolled out of bed. Asahi immediately set all thoughts of how completely adorable he was in pajamas with his hair sticking out every which way aside, focusing on the bleary eyes, the huge dark circles under them, the tear streaks, and the fact that he was still in his rumpled pajamas despite it being nearly four in the afternoon.

              Before Asahi could do anything, Nishinoya flew straight into a hug and hung on as tightly as he could. (Asahi refused to read anything into this. Nishinoya was a clingy person. He’d been known to hug people for buying him a meat bun.) He started babbling in that too-fast tone again, the same one he used when he’d been trying to get all those college facts out yesterday.

              “I’m sorry I shouldn’t have done all that we shouldn’t have gone I know you don’t really want to go to college and that’s okay really I just don’t want to play without you and I thought if I could get you to want to go to college I could play with you again as soon as I graduate because I really don’t want to be anyone else’s guardian deity I wanna be yours and I couldn’t _stand_ not being there to save your spikes and what if we wound up on different teams because you started after I did and you’re too smart to not go and pleasedon’tbemadatme!” He was hanging on to Asahi so tightly at this point that it was getting hard to breathe.

              Asahi didn’t really know what to do, except to hug back (gently; Nishinoya seemed so _fragile_ like this that he was afraid of breaking him) and mutter “I looked into some of the ones we went to”.

              He could almost see Nishinoya’s ears twitching. His face was still buried in Asahi’s chest, so Asahi continued “Some of the ones we went to really were good schools, and I looked—you made sure we went to all the ones that offered me a full scholarship nearby, didn’t you?”

              The messy hair that was all Asahi could see of Nishinoya’s head gave a shaky nod, and Asahi absently started trying to restore it to its usual spiky glory. “I doubt we can tour all of them, but there’s one in Tokyo that’s known for attracting players that tend to go on to nationals…” At that Nishinoya _finally_ understood that Asahi wasn’t angry. Unfortunately, that just meant he cuddled up closer, and Asahi really, actually couldn’t breathe. “’Noyaaa…”

              Nishinoya instantly let go and scooted back, blushing and twiddling with his hair to try and hide it, and then the rest of what he’d said hit Asahi.

              _He wants to play with me. He dragged me around to all those schools because he cares so much about being on my team that he couldn’t stand the thought of being the libero for anyone else._

“’Noya?” Nishinoya was still resolutely twirling his blond hair tuft, but he seemed to have gotten his blush mostly under control, although it came right back as soon as he heard Asahi.

              “…You’re so determined to play with me that you really don’t want to even take the slightest chance we might wind up on different teams in college?” Nishinoya turned the exact color of a strawberry at that.

              “…didn’t want to come back to Karasuno’s team without you either.”

              Asahi had known that, of course, but somehow he’d interpreted it as Nishinoya’s usual stubborn pride making up an excuse to avoid joining the team again after his suspension.

And _of course_ Asahi’s brain picked that exact moment to completely freeze up. Nishinoya, however, climbed right back into his lap and put his head on Asahi’s shoulder and his arms around Asahi’s waist and seemed perfectly content to stay there.

              There was a lot Asahi wanted to ask, and he knew he should be ordering Nishinoya to shower and clean up and brush his ridiculous hair and let the rest of the team know that Noya was okay and they’d see him at practice tomorrow.

              …That could wait, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand that's the end of it! To anyone who's read this far: Thank you! I hope you liked it. To the people who left kudos: THANK YOU. Knowing people read and liked my story is a really amazing feeling. To Animewhore: Thank you for the nice comment!  
> And to Arghnon, who found the time to leave a sweet encouraging comment after every chapter, I have to give a special shoutout to; thank you so much!!  
> ...Now I get to go back to waiting for Season 3. Please send help.


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